Category: JoeBiden

Nancy Pelosi nails response over concerns about impeachment sowing division in U.S.

Posted on by Marissa Higgins

During House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s weekly press briefing on Thursday morning, the California Democrat appeared to stop herself from making a mistake many of us may find ourselves making as we adjust to life in 2021. What is it? The speaker referred to Joe Biden as “vice president” and then updated her language with the now correct identifier: President Biden. As change goes, a pretty fun one to adjust to after four years of the Trump administration.

On a more serious note, however, the speaker stressed a point that will be reassuring to many progressives, Democrats, and, frankly, even some Republicans. In reference to the pro-Trump insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, Pelosi said, “There is no question that there were members in this body who gave aid and comfort to those … with the idea that they were embracing a lie. ... A lie perpetuated by the president."

She went on to state that there will be an after-action review, and, if House lawmakers “did aid and abet, there will be more than just comments from their colleagues here. … There will be prosecution if they aided and abetted an insurrection in which people died.” Pelosi stressed, of course, that it all comes down to evidence, which, in her words, “remains to be seen.”

Let’s check out other highlights of her briefing, as well as clips, below.

Here’s that clip.

Speaker Pelosi says there will be consequences if House lawmakers are found to have aided and abetted insurrectionists: "More than just comments from their colleagues here, there will be prosecution." pic.twitter.com/OxtZLBAomy

— The Recount (@therecount) January 21, 2021

A journalist, identified on Twitter as Manu Raju of CNN, asked Pelosi if she was at all concerned that moving forward with an impeachment trial could contradict or undercut efforts to unify the country. In a word, she said, “No.”

Here’s that clip.

Speaker Pelosi says it would be “harmful to unity” to not hold Trump accountable for inciting the insurrection. The Senate must convict Trump. pic.twitter.com/gC8xBdyjzb

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) January 21, 2021

“The fact is, the president of the United States committed an act of incitement of insurrection. I don’t think it’s very unifying to say, Oh, let’s just forget it and move on.” Pelosi stressed it’s their responsibility to protect and defend the integrity and constitution of the United States. 

"You don't say to a president, ‘Do whatever you want in the last months of your administration,’ ... 'You're going to get a Get Out of Jail Card free,' because people think we should make nice-nice and forget that people died here on January 6th."

Pelosi stressed she thinks forgetting would, in fact, be harmful to unifying the country. And she’s definitely right, even as some Republicans, like Sen. Lindsey Graham, argue: “What good comes from impeaching a guy in Florida?,” as though Trump has been just “a guy in Florida” for the last four years. 

On a heartwarming note, Pelosi talked about the inauguration as a “breath of fresh air” for the nation, and congratulated the three new Democratic senators, as well as celebrating the new majority Democrats hold in the Senate. 

Here is that clip.

Speaker Pelosi: "That inauguration was a breath of fresh air for our country." pic.twitter.com/pdlz73WFRe

— The Hill (@thehill) January 21, 2021

You can check out a full livestream below, courtesy of YouTube.

YouTube Video

The last days of Trump: Abandoned, detested, and as angry as always

Posted on by Mark Sumner

On Thursday, the major activity at the White House seemed to be staff members escaping with photographs and statues that very likely were not theirs to take. Inside, many offices are described as empty, due to all those staffers who suddenly began getting concerned that continuing to associate with a twice-impeached instigator of an insurrection might not be good for their resume.

Meanwhile, somewhere inside the maze of empty offices, Donald Trump still lurks, his fingers twitching to send out tweets forever out of reach, his fevered brow unmopped by an absent Hope Hicks, his bellows of impotent rage echoing sweetly, sweetly through the corridors. And if there is one thing that’s getting Trump extra ragey in these final days before he’s escorted from the property, it is any comparison between himself and one Richard M. Nixon. 

Especially because the thing that keeps coming up is the one thing that Nixon did right for the nation—resign.

As CNN reports, Trump is spending his days in a tweetless, rally-less, and apparently friendless circle of accusations, impeachment, and plunging poll numbers. As he gets ready to head out the door to the lowest ratings since there have been ratings, the one thing that Trump has made absolutely clear is that he’s not going to emulate the one thing that Nixon did that benefited both the nation and himself. That’s not to say the idea wasn’t discussed by staffers and Cabinet members. It was. However, Trump shot down any possibility that he might depart without being kicked out. So much so that now any mention of the the 37th president has been completely banned.

Trump probably doesn’t want to be reminded that not only did Nixon recognize a losing proposition and walk away before getting impeached, he also managed to keep his popularity high enough to grab a second term before his actions related to Watergate brought everything crashing down. Meanwhile, the same Pew poll shows that the major motivation for many voters in 2020 was the chance to get rid of Trump. A majority felt that Trump had bumbled the response to the coronavirus, and an even larger majority want Trump to simply go away and never be a major figure in U.S. politics again.

Right now, Trump can look out his window and see bunting and signs for "2021 Biden-Harris Inauguration" from stands that have been erected across from the White House. Inside the White House, his sources of comfort are few. Not only has Hicks departed, but Trump is on the outs with Rudy Giuliani and infinitely mad at wingman Mike Pence. It’s hard to find a single White House staffer who hasn’t earned Trump’s scorn over the past few weeks by slipping up and admitting the reality—he lost, and his time is almost up.

Aides have tried to cheer Trump up by asking him to give one last address to the nation, one in which he could list all those accomplishments like giving a massive tax break to billionaires, building 30 miles of wall through a national monument that disrupted irreplaceable cultural sites, killing off 400,000 Americans, and triggering the first invasion of the Capitol since 1814. But even this list of incredible achievements has failed to stir Trump into getting out his Sharpie and jotting down a few last-minute lies. 

Instead, Trump is demanding a big sendoff. However, staff are having to work hard to collect enough warm bodies to make it appear that anyone still cares. There’s also the little fact that if Trump waits until the inauguration to depart, he’ll not only be flying on a plane that is no longer Air Force One, but will have to ask Biden’s permission to borrow his jet. Trump hates all of that.

With most of Trump’s Cabinet already departed—some due to last-minute resignations—it will surprise exactly no one if Trump decides to head for Mar-a-Lago while he still doesn’t have to ask someone else for the keys to the plane.

McConnell tries to shut down momentum on impeachment, leaves time for more discovery of Trump crimes

Posted on (Updated by Joan McCarter

Two-time popular vote loser Donald Trump has also now achieved the distinction of being the only two-time impeached occupant of the Oval Office, earning half of the four presidential impeachments in U.S. history. He's unlikely to make history by being the only one to be removed from office by Senate conviction, however. That's unless he does something extreme in the next six days, which he is more than capable of, but might be a stretch—even for him

That's in large part because current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused soon-to-be Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer’s request to expedite the hearing. The two could have agreed to use emergency authority to bring the Senate back as soon as Thursday or Friday to start hearings and potentially have it done before Inauguration Day next Wednesday. But that would have required McConnell giving a damn about the republic. Instead, he said Wednesday that the trial will begin at the Senate's "first regular meeting following receipt of the article from the House." The first regular meeting of the Senate is Jan. 19. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not said yet when she'll send the charge to the Senate.

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The problem is, of course, acting upon and prioritizing President-elect Joe Biden's 100-day agenda, which includes some pretty essential stuff. Biden has suggested that the Senate bifurcate its time, divided between confirming his Cabinet members and working on COVID-19 relief on the one hand, and impeachment on the other. Presumably, Pelosi, Schumer, and Biden are discussing this now, trying to determine the best course of action, now that McConnell has screwed them all by refusing to take responsibility for Trump. As usual.

Conviction will require two-thirds of the Senate, meaning 17 Republicans will have to join with Democrats to convict. The problem McConnell and those Republicans face is that every day that passes reveals more horrific details of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, and more implications that there was a level of Republican institutional support for it, from members of Congress who might have been complicit to the Republican Attorneys General Association. There's a whole lot of smoke right now obscuring just how deep the plotting for the insurrection went, and when it's cleared it could be exceedingly bad news for Republicans. That's where the delay—allowing for a lot more discovery—could help seal Trump's fate with Republicans.

McConnell is making a bet, apparently, that it won't work that way, that the delay will distract the nation from the horror that has been replayed over and over again of their house, the Capitol, being besieged and vandalized by a mob screaming for blood. The good news is that Republicans' initial efforts of pretending at "unity" didn't win over a single Democrat, and in fact 10 Republicans voted to impeach. Biden is not saying anything about "looking forward, not back" and is not trying to sweep any of this under the rug of history. Corporate America is further distancing itself from Republicans by the minute. This is not going to go away with Trump—and the Republican Party can't afford for it to. The reckoning will come, and Republicans are going to again feel the pressure of choosing to stand with Trump or with the country.

Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii) talks to Daily Kos, live today on The Brief

Posted on by kos

My YouTube show The Brief, co-hosted with Kerry Eleveld, airs every Tuesday, 1:30PT/4:30ET. Today we’re going to go deep into the Senate with the help of two amazing guests: U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, and Adam Jentleson, former top aide to Harry Reid and author of his new book “Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.” 

YouTube Video

We might have some things to talk about, like the brand new Democratic Senate majority  in the wake of the Georgia runoff elections, the insurrection at the Capitol, the looming impeachment trial, and the fate of President-elect Joe Biden’s 100-day agenda with our narrow 50-50 majority and the destructive filibuster (which is the topic of Jentleson’s book). 

The show is also expanding into a podcast as well. Links to all the relevant podcasting platforms are being finalized and I’ll share those as soon as we get inclusion. 

Drop any questions you might have for Sen. Schatz or Jentleson in the comments below!

Some Democrats want to move past Trump. But ignoring his seditious acts threatens American democracy

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries delivered a message Monday about the posture of House Democrats' leadership team regarding Donald Trump's relentless attempts to engineer a fascist takeover of the American republic. 

“We’re not looking backward," Jeffries told reporters during a press conference. "We’re looking forward to the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20th.” 

That forward-looking vision came less than 24 hours after the Washington Post posted smoking-gun audio of an hour-long phone call in which Trump (aka Mafia Don) attempted to threaten and cajole Georgia's top election officials to "find" enough votes to overturn the state's election results. 

Nonetheless, Kate Bedingfield, an adviser to President-elect Joe Biden offered a similar take to Jeffries, saying, "The country is ready to move forward."

But the problem with simply rushing past Mafia Don's political grave is that ignoring his seditious acts is as much a threat to the future of American democracy as Trump's failed efforts were in the first place. In short—seditious, traitorous acts left unchecked beget seditious, traitorous acts. In fact, Senate Republicans with the twinkle of 2024 presidential bids in their eyes are already lining up in support of Trump's effort to tear down democracy in order to maintain his grip on power. Trump's final gambit is all but certain to fail on Wednesday during a joint session of Congress to certify the election results, but the major takeaway is that plenty of future GOP Trumps are waiting in the wings to trash representative democracy on the way to meeting their own political ends unless a price is exacted for doing so. And the lesson those Republicans have learned so far—just as Trump learned from his acquittal—is that there's no serious price to pay, political or otherwise, for betraying the country.

Both the incoming Biden administration and Congress have a role to play in safeguarding our democracy for generations to come. One is criminal and the other is a matter of governance. Biden must appoint smart, resolute leaders to the Justice Department and then simply get out of the way and let them do their jobs. Hamstringing justice in any way with regard to Trump's endless assault on the law and the Constitution would be disastrous for the country's future. But Biden can easily make those appointments to the Department of Justice and then rightfully send the message that his administration is focused on the task of righting the ship in regard to the pandemic and the faltering economy. 

House Democrats, however, cannot afford to simply move along, as if the threat to our democracy ends once Trump is summarily booted from the White House residence. That is a patently false contention given the upheaval we are already witnessing in the Republican party. Trump must be held to account. That can be done in several ways, a couple of which are already in process.

One way is by making a criminal referral to the FBI over Trump's attempted election crimes, an investigation that Reps. Ted Lieu of California and Kathleen Rice of New York are already urging FBI Director Chris Wray to undertake.

Another possibility is censuring Trump over his call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson introduced a censure motion on Monday with the support of 90 of his colleagues. That number will likely grow in the coming days and weeks as Congress gets back to work—or at least, it should grow, since there are presently 222 Democratic members of the House.

Impeachment is another potential option, but to what end at this point? Trump is just over two weeks away from removal and, as we have already seen, the effort would surely be blocked by the GOP-controlled Senate. Heck, more than a quarter of the Senate Republican caucus has jumped aboard Team coup at this point. 

What does seem a worthy effort, however, is continued investigations of Trump and his minions. Not only do the facts need to come out, but if Democrats are to draft legislation to safeguard our democracy against future Trumps, they will need to know exactly what actions he and his enablers took in their extensive efforts to kneecap America's institutions and systems of governance. 

But none of those three options—a criminal referral, censure, and ongoing investigations—amount to simply "looking forward." What is past will haunt the nation and Democrats, in particular, if it is buried before an autopsy can be conducted and people held to account for their roles in assaulting and undermining America’s democracy. 

Biden calls out Trump appointees for refusing to brief transition in ‘key national security areas’

Posted on (Updated by Hunter

We're on the cusp of January here, and President-elect Joe Biden is still being forced to call out the Trump-run federal government for refusing to provide national security briefings to his team. The Office of Management and Budget and the Defense Department, specifically, are refusing to provide briefings in "key national security areas."

The delays have been going on since before Christmas, and now Biden's calling it "nothing short" of "irresponsibility." He's also making sure to pin the blame squarely on "political leadership" while still praising the cooperation of career officials.

If Donald Trump, who is at this point in the throes of full-on delusion over his election loss, refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the next president, that is his own problem. For Trump appointees to take action to willfully block the next president from obtaining information about the nation’s current national security concerns, however, yet again crosses over into national betrayal. It is unquestionable that the delay in transferring national security information may impede the next administration's ability to respond to crisis. For Defense Department hacks, in particular, to bury national security needs under those of Trump's own ego is unforgivable.

The Washington Post reports that after Defense Department claims that the Biden team had agreed to put off all transition meetings until after the holidays, which the Biden team calls a lie and which when dealing with national security concerns seems like an implausible stance to begin with, there have been no transition meetings since Dec.18.

At this point merely firing these authoritarian-minded little pissants seems insufficient. Even if Donald Trump cannot muster an ounce of integrity or pretended-at leadership, that does not excuse the staff that have helped him corrupt our government on his own behalf.

It is most likely that these moves are mere petty tweaking from Trump political hires who do not particularly care if their moves do or don’t harm national security. That has been the way of things since long before impeachment, and has been an ironclad rule ever since.

But it is also possible that the resistance from the Defense Department, in particular, is an intentional effort to hide possible Trump-ordered actions in his last days in office. We are dealing with a man who at this point is deep in the throes of rage and would-be sabotage. It would not be implausible for Trump to order an attack on Iran with the explicit intent to foment a military conflict with the nation in the first days of Biden's presidency. It would not be implausible for Trump's loyalist hacks—remember, he has in recent months cleaned out Pentagon leadership and elevated sycophants, part of yet another purge that saw even the ultra-reliable toady William Barr expelled for insufficient corruption—to be hiding any number of other last-minute schemes from the incoming administration.

Who knows. Thanks to a seemingly unending list of Republican go-alongs, we may be in for at least one more corrupt and nation-betraying surprise before Trump finally flees.

Watch right winger give out offer code for MyPillow during ‘StopTheSteal’ rally in Washington, D.C.

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

The Trump administration is a swamp. The great con that Trump was able to to perpetrate on the Americans who voted for him was that his political outsider credentials—which were and remain real—would allow him to clean up the big money corruption developed and fostered predominantly by the Republican Party in Washington, D.C. The reality has been that not only has Trump further swampified the government, he’s also brought in new con men and women into the government—or more realistically, brought around the government to leech off of. These are people like Mike Lindell and David Harris. Lindell you might remember as the MyPillow guy who sort of makes up a lot of right-wing media advertising dollars. He’s a shameless mad hatter pushing unproven COVID-19 remedies and alien-level conspiracy theories about the election.

David Harris is a lesser known former vitamin huckster who rebranded himself as a Black conservative and received a big boost from Trump in popularity. His angle is that he’s conservative and he’s Black and there’s a financial niche market to be found in super racist right-wing circles if you can serve the purpose of making right-wingers feel less racist than they are. Harris was highlighted as one of the top “superspreaders” of Trump’s false election misinformation by The New York Times in the weeks after Election Day. On Sunday, Harris was in Washington, D.C. for one of the “Stop The Steal” Trump rallies of people trying to overthrow the U.S. government. He spoke on stage in front of others, like the Mike “MyPillow” Lindell. It turns out that before Harris went into his speech, which mostly consisted of a long-winded recitation of a Bible passage, he had some shilling to do.

One of the people helping to fund these rallies is Lindell, and Harris wanted to make sure the audience gave Lindell the applause and recognition he deserves; being a scumbag who wants to overthrow the government takes money and time and conning. Before Lindell went up to bluster away relatively incoherently about how all of the Biden votes are proof that Donald Trump has more votes (yes, that was the basic statement by MyPillow man on Sunday), Harris had some business to do for what we call in the entertainment business the money.:

DAVID HARRIS: A special thank you to the cosponsor that really helped fund a lot of this. Mr. MyPillow himself, Mike Lindell! Amazing patriot, loves this country, loves us, loves the president, and the president loves him. And I gotta tell you I love his codes, right? I love his pillows, I love his sheets, I love his mattress topper, and I love his codes because you know what, the Kraken has been released. You are a part of the Kraken. So for the best deals to support this patriot, use the code “Kraken” at mypillow.com. He does not talk about a lot of what goes through behind the scenes, but he goes through a lot of hell for standing up for us.

It’s very important to note here how Harris began by saying, “And I gotta tell you I love his codes, right?” before remembering that he needed to do the whole make sure to mention the things Lindell sells (i.e., sheets and bed toppers), and then mention the codes. It’s one of the things you learn doing live readings for ads. There are a few things you need to hit and if you nail it, you make it seem like you aren’t doing an ad. Usually you just have to remember to mention all of the things in the right order. Harris does a fine job selling that MyPillow merch. We are just weeks away from their discount promotional codes going from “Kraken” to things like “IAMASucker” and “PleaseTakeMyMoney.”

After the day’s events, Proud Boys and other racists from the day’s “peaceful protests” went on to enact seemingly state-sanctioned violence against Americans who are interested in protecting our democracy from ethno-state insurgents and domestic terrorists like Trump and friends.

YouTube Video

It is well past time to confront the truth of the Republican Party’s threat to democracy

Posted on by RETIII

Watching the depressing and alarming spectacle of 17 Republican state attorneys general joining Texas’s bad faith, frivolous Supreme Court application to overturn the election in favor of Donald Trump, I am reminded that in September 2015, I wrote a post titled “The Dark Truth of John Boehner’s Resignation.”

What was that “dark truth”?

What is important here is not that Republicans object to the limits of their power, but that Republicans apparently cannot accept that such limits even exist. 

It sounds crazy, I know, but this represents the true "dark side" of Boehner's resignation: It is another significant step in the Republican Party's shocking withdrawal from our system of democratic governance.  

Five years ago, the notion that Republicans were abandoning democracy was considered to be a somewhat important observation, something to be widely shared and discussed. Today? Well, let’s consider a few of the developments since 2015.

Folks, this is insane. It’s an open, ongoing assault on the fundamental tenets of this country, unseen since the run up to the Civil War. 

Admittedly, defeating this Republican problem is hard and complex, and viable solutions will take discussions longer than this one post. But allow me to propose we rediscover an essential concept: scandal.

The first and necessary step back requires that our country, our politics, and our media rediscover how to label, report, and resist scandalous behavior. Remember Watergate? Whitewater? Benghazi? None of them compares to this threat to democracy (yes, not even Watergate).  

That means reporting this for what it is, and not inviting any co-conspirators on for polite interviews. It means having a panel of historians and civic leaders on, regularly, to discuss the scandal, not a D-list of political hacks. It means consistent front page reporting on this crisis. It means not reporting this as “horse race” politics. And it means that Democratic leadership has to be fighting against this, openly and all the time.

Shutting this down requires that, as a basic first step, we all begin to treat this as the five-alarm fire scandal that it is. 

I once called the Republicans’ hunger for power a “dark truth.” Five years later, sadly, it is an open, proud and largely unchallenged truth.

We can’t let this continue.

Rabid GOP base now too delusional to be useful in battling incoming Biden administration

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

The dumbed down conspiracy-laden GOP base has been a drag on the country for more than a decade now, so it's only fitting that it is finally kneecapping the political calculus of the Republican party.

Alas, Donald Trump's true believers are so invested in the mirage that he won the election that conservative groups can't counter-message any of President-elect Joe Biden's incoming agenda without being attacked, according to Politico. The super-secret command came from Donald Trump himself as he urged everyone to ignore the incoming Biden administration as a way of delegitimizing his win. Smart.

Now conservative groups in Washington have had to forgo much of the work they would normally engage in during the transition period to a president from the opposing party. Along the way, they have been unable to message about the horrors that certain Cabinet picks might bring, unable to hire soon-to-be unemployed Trump administration officials for fear of reprisals, and unable to get conservative outlets obsessively writing about baseless voter fraud claims interested in covering any stories about Biden’s upcoming tenure. 

“All of conservative media is about the recounts [and] the fraud allegations,” said a high-level employee at one conservative media outlet. “Trump is basically the assignment editor for the conservative press.”

The newfound predicament of this reality-based minority of GOP operatives in Washington is born of experience. Organizations and individuals that have made the mistake of crossing Trump’s red line have been called traitors who are feeding the "liberal media" narrative. “You definitely have a grassroots conservative movement that’s completely unwilling to discuss anything related to a Biden administration,” said an employee at one conservative nonprofit.

Deliciously, the delusional groupthink has also spilled over into the two Senate runoffs in Georgia, leaving groups helpless to warn against what a Democratically controlled Senate could mean when paired with a Biden White House.

“The winning narrative in Georgia would be that Republicans need the Senate to counter Joe Biden and [Vice President-elect] Kamala Harris when they’re in office,” one prominent elected Republican told Politico. “The problem is you can’t make that case effectively when you’ve got the president telling some of his voters, ‘Don’t worry, Joe Biden is not going to be president.’”

That cognitive dissonance has made otherwise mundane but critical organizing both fruitless and effortful. “I sent out a weekly email and mentioned something about a potential Biden administration and the fallout was ridiculous,” said an employee at one conservative nonprofit.

One area where the inability to do long-term planning could really hamper the conservative response is in combatting a series of potentially aggressive executive orders that will likely flow from the Biden administration starting on Day One. Whether Democrats manage to secure a majority in the Senate or not during the Georgia runoffs, Biden will almost surely make sweeping use of executive actions right out of the gate to overturn a number of toxic Trump remnants. Typically, those actions would meet with immediate legal challenges from conservatives who had been strategizing for months about the best legal path to blocking them. Instead, the conservative response could be delayed and even scattershot in its approach. 

In fact, one of the four Senate Republicans who have actually acknowledged Biden's win is warning his colleagues that they are handicapping themselves heading into an entirely new landscape of political battles. 

“Republicans can’t afford to get stuck in the denial stage of grief,” said Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska. Sasse has declared he would “crawl over broken glass" to block some of the names being floated for Cabinet positions under Biden. “We’ve got some big fights ahead, and it’d be prudent for Republicans to be focused on the governance challenges facing our center-right nation,” he added.

Imagine that—a guy who voted to acquit Trump of impeachment charges without hearing from a single witness suddenly in a spin about coddling Trump being a political liability. You reap what you sow.

Desperate Trump campaign trots out Melania to make partisan attacks

Posted on by Laura Clawson

Yet another indication that Team Trump is nervous about next Tuesday’s elections: Melania Trump emerged for a rare campaign event—her first solo event of 2020—on Tuesday and took a much more partisan tone than usual. In her remarks in Pennsylvania, Melania directly attacked Joe Biden (using official campaign talking points, nothing new to see) and attacked Democrats for … being divisive and not leading on COVID-19. She even tried to link her husband’s disastrous coronavirus response to impeachment.

“No one should be promoting fear of real solutions for purely political ends,” Melania said. Which, fair in a vacuum, but context matters. “The Democrats have chosen to put their own agendas over the American people's well-being. Instead, they attempt to create a divide. A divide in something that should be non-partisan and non-controversial. A divide that causes confusion and fear instead of hope and security. That is not the leadership,” she said, in as pure an example of Republican projection as you can probably find.

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Oh, my. Putting a partisan agenda above the American people’s well-being and instead trying to divide and govern through confusion and fear … gosh, how dare those dastardly Democrats do such a thing!

"Let us also not forget what the Democrats chose to focus on when COVID-19 first came into our country,” Melania offered. “While the President was taking decisive action to keep the American people safe, the Democrats were wasting American taxpayer dollars in a sham impeachment.” 

Um. Let’s turn to the timeline, shall we? 

The Senate’s vote on Trump’s impeachment trial was on February 5, three days after Trump restricted travel from China, a restriction that came later than other nations and was incomplete, rather than “decisive action.” At the time, Trump said, “Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China. … We can’t have thousands of people coming in who may have this problem, the coronavirus. So we’re going to see what happens, but we did shut it down, yes.”

Trump continued downplaying the threat of the virus—intentionally, as it turned out, with full knowledge that it was a serious danger—for more than a month. For example, February 12, a week after Senate Republicans acquitted him: “We have a very small number of people in the country, right now, with it. It’s like around 12. Many of them are getting better. Some are fully recovered already. So we’re in very good shape.”

February 25: “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away.”

February 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

February 28: “Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. … And this is their new hoax.”

March 5, one month after the Senate vote: “With approximately 100,000 CoronaVirus cases worldwide, and 3,280 deaths, the United States, because of quick action on closing our borders, has, as of now, only 129 cases (40 Americans brought in) and 11 deaths.”

March 7: “We’re doing very well and we’ve done a fantastic job.”

By contrast, Joe Biden warned, “We are not prepared for a pandemic. Trump has rolled back progress President Obama and I made to strengthen global health security. We need leadership that builds public trust, focuses on real threats, and mobilizes the world to stop outbreaks before they reach our shores”—before the coronavirus emerged in China. 

On January 27, he responded to the news of the emerging outbreak, writing “The outbreak of a new coronavirus, which has already infected more than 2,700 people and killed over 80 in China, will get worse before it gets better. Cases have been confirmed in a dozen countries, with at least five in the United States. There will likely be more,” and detailing preparedness measures that should have been taken.

Senate Minority Leader Schumer called on Trump to declare a national emergency on January 26. Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a plan for combating the outbreak on January 28. 

Democrats were responding early—yes, even during the impeachment process, walking and chewing gum at the same time—while Trump continued downplaying the threat for weeks and bragging that his too-little-too-late China travel restrictions had done all that needed to be done. That’s what Melania continues to brag about, despite the facts. Because otherwise, they have to admit they have nothing.